Monday, March 17, 2008

Blithe Spirit

Our Spring 1973 play was "Blithe Spirit". I had the male lead. Sandra played one of my two wives. Talula played the other one. All three of us were very close friends. We had to do it with English accents. I worked on mine for a couple of months, listening to all sorts of British people. My accent turned out to be a cross between George Harrison and Margaret Rutherford. Rehearsals went well, although there was so many special effects in the play that we were not able to work on the third act much. On opening night, the first scene of the third act didn't go too well. Mary DuPuy played a psychic. She and I were sitting on stage with a pitcher of tea. The play called for liquor, but being a Baptist school, we had to use tea. At the start of the scene, I said something that wasn't in the script. Mary had a horrified look on her face, but we had to keep going. For the next few minutes, in character, we talked about what had transpired in the play; other characters; the weather; and we drank a lot of tea. I could hear Mr. Vivian offstage saying to the others, "Where are they?" He finally pushed the girl playing the maid to come onstage and tell me that I was needed in "the kitchen". I got up and walked offstage. Mr. Vivian showed me the script, and I saw where we needed to be. I went back, and we picked up as if nothing had happened. The audience never knew. When the curtains closed at the end of the scene, Mary and I rushed to the bathrooms. We had drunk all of the tea.

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